


Though She Be But Little

by Bodhicitta



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-14
Updated: 2019-02-26
Packaged: 2019-08-02 05:24:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16298933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bodhicitta/pseuds/Bodhicitta
Summary: They had missed something. They had all missed something. Something about the little lab mouse. Something so big, they could not possibly have seen it, something akin to the sky in its vastness and totality.





	1. Incandescence

**Author's Note:**

> Not Brit-picked. Please feel free to help with that. Comments are my food - please give me life!! I haven’t posted in a while, but I just can’t quit these characters, this fandom, this universe! Feels good to be back.

It had taken them a long time to come back to normal. To working side-by-side next to one another in the lab, silent but for occasional pleasantries, murmured notes to one another concerning the calibration of lab equipment, a meaningful nod to indicate they were close, so close to putting the bartender away for killing her employer.

They had even gone out for coffee, had chips around the corner, shared a cab to pick up Rosie for trips to the zoo, the library, the ice cream shop.

Everything had returned to normal.  If she was a bit wistful, that was thoroughly within the scope of expected behaviors considering the loss of a friend, having to shoulder some parenting duties for a child not her own (and the attendant biological longing created by such close proximity to said child)....and of course, the horror day and its aftermath.

But then Sherlock got the text, a somewhat ominous text.

_We need to talk. - MH_

For the thousandth time he smirked at the fact that so many of his goldfish had the same initials. But he also took in a deep, girding sigh. She probably wanted to talk about The Words, the words that had been wrenched from him, and she probably wanted to dissect those moments, go over that day with a fine toothed comb - did he mean them, did he mean The Words, and what if he did, should he have to then act upon those sentiments?  Why was it not enough to simply “have” those feelings. All the unpleasant outcomes from the horror day had been dealt with...all the suppressed memories and...feelings...had been processed and stowed neatly away for safe storage...except this one.

He flung his scarf about his neck with even more than the usual vigor, knocking an unsuspecting pedestrian square in the face, and strode into the coffee shop, where a tiny, adorable, feisty, vivid pathologist waited for him, exhibiting at least five signs of extreme anxiousness (picking at the skin on her thumb, stroking her locks of glossy, chestnut hair....)


	2. Luminosity

“Sherlock? Sherlock?”

He had been deep inside his Mind Palace for some time - based on the change in the light, possibly a few hours. He remembered wrapping his scarf around his neck, walking into the coffee shop, admiring how Molly’s small form completely filled the space it was required to fill, but no more. Her limbs, her torso, all of her appendages and non-essential body parts, well, everything, complemented her personality so perfectly.  That was the thing about Molly Hooper.  There was nothing extraneous about her.  Perhaps this explained why she suited him so well.  

As a friend.  

He concluded this assessment (he found himself assessing and re-assessing her more frequently even than before, which had been about five times per day); then he sat down, demanded his tea, and ...

“Well, what is it Molly?” he asked, knowing full well it was about the horror day and The Words and how he had said them, and not just that he had said them but the manner in which he had uttered them...so convincingly, so full of that ungainly, ill-mannered intruder - _feeling_...

“What is it, Molly,” he asked just a bit more loudly than he had planned, “Did Rosie beat you at chess?” He snorted.  “Again?”

Molly raised one eyebrow, but then seemed to think better of getting annoyed.  Annoying people was one of Sherlock’s myriad ways of distracting them from broaching the subject of feelings.

“No, Sherlock, it is not about our godchild.  It’s about...me.”

She became very small.  He was hoping that after all this time she would grow, not shrink in his presence.  She seemed to be receding.  Something passed over her face. Something unfamiliar, and not like her.  He began to be truly concerned.  Oh, God, was it medical?  If it were some terminal diagnosis, just have out with it.  Mycroft can extract the cure from his operatives at the NHS.  Or I’ll just have to do overtime in the lab and cure you myself....it will take away time from the Work, but sod it all, I care more about her than the Work.

“No, it’s not a diagnosis.  Nothing’s wrong with me, Sherlock.”

"Oh, was that out loud? Well… Sorry. I mean, I’m not sorry that you’re not sick. I mean...”

“Yes – it was out loud. And...thank you,” she said with a deeper tone, placing her hand on his.

“For what?” Sherlock snorted.

“For offering to cure me.’

"But that’s foolish to thank me...I didn’t really do anything.”

"But the offer....”

“Oh. Yes.  That.  People are so inordinately grateful for the most trivial of things.”

Molly flopped back into her chair, taking her hand with her.  She gazed upon the lanky, pale man before her as if regarding a precocious child for whom she had a very great deal of affection. Her mouth turned up at the corner.  

“You really are a wonder,” she sighed.

“So I’ve been told.  By John.  But he usually says it differently.”

He hoped that an enumeration of John’s multitudinous ways of calling him an arse would be sufficiently distracting; he half hoped Molly would go along for the ride on this tangent...but in his heart he knew that she would return back to the reason she had texted him so portentously.

“You see, Sherlock....I _knew_ you were going to say it.”

“Say...what...”

“You know ‘what,’ Sherlock.  The Words.”

“The words...what words? There are lots and lots of words.  People are forever saying words to one another and most of them are pointless and stupid and beside the point and very much interfere with The Work.”

“Yes. This is all true.  Most words are very, very pointless.”

”I’m glad you agree.  Finally!”

”But I don’t mean the pointless words, Sherlock.  I mean, the words you said to me, on the phone.  That day.  You said that you love me.”

Sherlock looked down into his lap, a child about to be scolded.

"I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that,” he began.  “I have a lot to say to you about those words, and how I said them, and why you demanded that I say them...and it has been difficult to formulate exactly how I was going to say, or rather, what I want to say, what I have wanted to say, for many weeks now.”

He looked up at her.  Why was she twisting her face into paroxysms of guilt? When she finished whatever internal struggle she had been experiencing, she looked up at him, her face fairly glowing from heat - whether embarrassment,  mortification, he could not suss.

 “Sherlock.  Before you say any more.  You see...” she ventured, “I haven’t been _entirely_ honest with you.”

He blinked.  

“I knew you were going to say it...before you said it.”

Sherlock gulped.  Blinked rapidly.  “Because you forced me to.  You forced me to say it.  You told me to say it.  I had to....”

Molly shook her head furiously.  “Well, no, let me back up..   I knew she - Eurus - was going to require you to make me say those words.”

“What do you mean?  How could you know what she...” Sherlock froze as a portion of his brain began to review that day’s events.  “That’s impossible...”

Molly looked down at his hand, drumming furiously on the table.  She lay her tiny by comparison hand atop his to calm him.

Looking up at him soulfully, she swallowed.  “Before the phone even rang, I knew.”

 And he plunged headlong into his mind palace, as if pushed down a flight of stairs.

 

 

 


	3. Iridescence

Down deep, down at the bottom of the stairs, of the well, of the dungeon, of the cistern, he was safe, safe in the dark. Safe, but cold and lonely.  

“Alone is what protects me,” he had said once....

Or words to that effect.  More words. Everything, composed of words.  Or rather, the work.  Everything was the work.

How long he lay there, curled against the cold flagstones, minutes, hours, he could not discern.

But he was not entirely alone.  The small, pale girl with the silly ponytail. Molly was there, reaching out a hand to him.  

‘Why are you here...in my mind?”  He sat up straight against the damp stone wall. “I think I would like you to leave.“

“Thing is Sherlock, I’m not sure I can leave.” She sat down next to him.  “It’s your mind palace.  Only you can make me leave, I’m afraid.”

“Why...why would you say those things.  Why would you say you knew what Eurus was going to say...you didn’t even know Eurus existed.”

Molly looked away.  Was that guilt on her face?

“But...of course, you did.  You knew she existed, how...why.  Because you are working with her? To, what...undermine my sanity?”

He blinked, his face twisted in fear and hope, hope that she was not a villain in his story.  She, who had been so sweet and good to him, could it all be a lie, like so much in this world, lies, subterfuge.  She had been like rock, as true as steel, but was she slipping away from under his feet, like quicksand?  He only now began to realize how much he had counted on her steadfastness. That loyalty, like clean, unpolluted air. Filling his lungs with something like vigor, something that felt like life itself.

But so much had proven to be not as it had seemed.

“Oh, no,” he murmured, whispering now. “Et tu, Molly? Et tu?”

“No, no, my darling, no...and I would never...never do that to you...I would never set out to harm you.  If I’ve ever hurt you, I’m sorry Sherlock.  Truly.”

She grasped his hand.  They both looked down at their hands pressed together.  He gently, gingerly brought her hand to his mouth, kissing it chastely.

“No, it’s true.  You’ve never hurt me. You’ve only helped me. You knew how to make The Fall work. You saved me from drug overdoses, too many times. You...are always a step ahead of me, because, was it...is it...because...you and she...”

He scuttled backwards away from her, huddling against the cold stone wall. 

“Are you...are you Eurus?” He whispered, horrified. “Is this...are _you_....merely another of her disguises?” He spitting out the last word.  

He looked her up and down, derisively.  “Molly.  Molly Hooper.  My friend, or so I thought.  The mousy pathologist, frumpy ill-fitting clothes, bitten off nails, overgrown ponytail like a school girl, those eyes though...your eyes are nothing like hers,” he gulped.

She took a deep cleansing breath.  “I am not Eurus, of that you can be very sure.”

He sniffled derisively, unconvinced.  “I’ve never seen you together.”

“This is true, she smiled. “But although Eurus is a quite talented mimic, I can assure you we are not the same person.”

 “She’s in a prison,” they both said at the same time.  “Yes, yes,” Molly added.  “We, we could call right now, if you like.  Mycroft could call, confirm.”

‘Yes, I think I would like that.”

”I can stand right here, you can call Mycroft...or...we can go, together.”

“I could take you to Sherrinford.”

"Yes.  And then you’ll see...I am not Eurus,” she said. “Never have been. Never could be.”

Sherlock stood up. Closed his eyes, shook his head. He opened his eyes.  Still in the mind palace.   Reluctantly, he asked her, “I think i’ll need some help.”

Molly clambered to her feet, impassive, waiting for instructions.

“Would you mind?” Sherlock implored.

Molly pulled her arm back, and soundly, emphatically slapped him across the face.

 


End file.
